RIFLE RANGE BOY

Nine Hours to Rama (1963) Director: Mark Robson This movie is based on a novel of the same name written by Stanley Wolpert. Both the book and the film were banned in India when they came out. Nehru and his government at that time thought that the story created a human out of Godse, justified his crime and did not give enough dignity to Gandhi. This was even discussed at the Rajya Saba level. Throughout our childhood, my sisters and I could not help but see an imposing statue of Gandhi in our living room. My mother had bought it from a Thaipusam fair to remind her kids to be a person who brings glory to family and nation. At that tender impressionable age, we took in all my mother's Gandhi stories of his tenacity and eloquence. We were reminded of his vow to his mother to stay vegetarian upon boarding the steamship to England, the land of beef eaters and gin. And staying true to his word, he allegedly stayed vegan, this Mahatma (great soul). Alas, when we grew, one by one, the onion...

Bose or Gandhi - Who Got Her Freedom? Author: Maj Gen (Dr) GD Bakshi SM, VSM (Rtd) (2019) Viewers who have seen the good Major General in action during his interviews agree that he is pretty passionate about war. Hailing from a Pashtun Hindu family with a strong tradition in the military, there is no denying that he is a nationalist by every means.  This book results from detailed research of recently declassified sensitive correspondence documents of the British Foreign Office. Many of the communications happened between the local British officers and their superiors in London. The critical decision-makers involved here are Field Marshall Sir Claude Auchinleck (Commander-in-Chief in India), Field Marshall Archibald Percival (Viceroy of India), Lord Pethick-Lawrence (Secretary of State of India) and Lord Clement Attlee (Prime Minister). Included in the analysis were the many field reports from Provincial Governors to their bosses on their assessment of ...

Jinnah (1998) Screenplay, direction: Jamil Dehlavi This must be Pakistan's reply to Richard Attenborough's narration of the Father of India, Mahatma Gandhi. It was made, not by a Pakistani, but by a London-based British of Pakistani-French descent. The controversial Jamil Dehlavi, whose 1980 film 'The Blood of Hussain' earned the ire of the Pakistani government. As the name suggests, the storyline paralleled the events surrounding the historic Battle of Karbala, which is vital in the Shia tradition, not to the predominantly Sunni Pakistanis. Even though this film fetes the founder, the Quaid-i-Azam, the great leader of Pakistan, it was never screened in Pakistan. Most depictions of Jinnah elsewhere are often of one who is cunning, conniving, humourless, and challenging to deal with. To be fair, this film tries as much as possible to paint a picture of a well-meaning, conscientious Jinnah. It, however, glaringly gives a blank about a few particular things about his backg...

English Vinglish (2012) The story reminds me of one of Gandhi's prophetic words. Be the change you want the world to be. Rather than demanding for the respect that you think you deserve and being all uptight about it, it makes more sense to earn it the hard but formidable old-fashioned way - you develop it and let the world decide whether you deserve that admiration. Gone are the days when, by virtue of birth and social standing, one can garner unquestioned loyalty and esteem. In real life, the weaker ones in society are just trampled upon and ridiculed to falsely give the aggressors their own self-worth. I think this quintessentially Indian message is subtly inserted into the story of a timid Bombay housewife who gets the opportunity to visit the Big Apple for her niece's wedding. Doing all the chores that are expected of her as a mother, wife and a doting daughter-in-law, she ignores the abuses and ridicules hurled at her, in her face and behind her back, for her lack in p...

They say that you, an individual do make that count. That is what they tell us when election day comes. They persuade you not to waste that vote and that it is everybody's birthright to choose their leader. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, so you do your share of your bargain. Cynics would reply them that a single swallow does not make up the whole summer. And that your single vote will never make the difference. That had never been a single incidence of an election decided by a single vote. But wait, there is! A constituency in Rajasthan was indeed caught in such a predicament in a 2008 Elections. A Congress candidate secured 62,216 votes versus his BJP opponent who managed 62,215 votes. The recounting of the postal votes and later, all the votes, showed exactly the same results. That, in itself, demonstrated how accurate the counting was! Zero error rate. The case later went to the courts when the loser accused the winner's second wife to have v...

Freedom at Midnight Authors: Larry Collins & Dominic Lapiere (1975) Freedom, surviving the tests of time. One look at the title, one might be forgiven to think that it might a draggy almost 600 paged slow account of the events leading to the lowering of the Union Jack and the subsequent hoisting in the full glory of the tri-coloured new flag with the emblem of Ashoka Chakra (Wheel of Righteousness). Luckily, it turns out to be one of the best accounts of the history of British India right down to the nitty-gritty account of little secrets of Indian now lost royalties. It is the result of three years of extensive research and numerous interviews. Browsing through some of the comments online, we can see other people’s viewpoint on this book. Some lament that it is a one-sided Western view of the happenings in a helpless land of the natives. Most of the account of the event are through Louis Mountbatten’s written journals, letters and one-to-one interview with him by the aut...

Einstein meets Tagore http://asok22.wix.com/rifle-range-boy

http://www.sanskritimagazine.com/india/why-i-killed-gandhi/ By  Sanskriti on February 2, 2014 Nathuram Godse’s Final Address to the Court Nathuram Godse was arrested immediately after he assassinated Gandhiji, based on a F. I. R. filed by Nandlal Mehta at the Tughlak Road Police station at Delhi . The trial, which was held in camera, began on May 27, 1948 and concluded on February 10, 1949. He was sentenced to death.  An appeal to the Punjab High Court, then in session at Simla, did not find favour and the sentence was upheld. The statement that you are about to read is the last made by Godse before the Court on the May 5, 1949. Such was the power and eloquence of this statement that one of the judges, G. D. Khosla, later wrote, “I have, however, no doubt that had the audience of that day been constituted into a jury and entrusted with the task of deciding Godse’s appeal, they would have brought a verdict of ‘not Guilty’ by an overwhelming majority” W...

Finally finished reading the parallel unbiased biography of two of 20th century's iconic statesmen who are actually remnants of the ideology of the 19th century Victorian values - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill. It traces the time before their birth with the story of their ancestors. Actually, after taking almost 9 month to finish the book at a snail's pace due to its fact compacted but 720+ paged package and my indulgences in my other vices, I can only recall certain salient points of their lives. Gandhi was born in a humble family whilst Churchill was born with an aristocratic background. They grew up following different pathways, one thinking that might is mightier than than words whilst the other believe that the soul force is mightier than brutal physical force. One thing common between them was that they both believed that their respective race was superior to the other. Churchill believed that the English were there to unite the inf...

Thich Quang Duc publicly set himself on fire in Vietnam in 1963 Reading through the excellent parallel biographies of Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi, one can imagine  what went through his mind when Gandhi proposed 'passive resistance' as a mean for Swaraj (self rule). Devoid of artillery superiority, reliance to economic and financial and skewing of Indian thinking from society to own self (individual rights), leaders of that era could only manipulate their subjects' mind through past glory of ancient civilization and nature! They said that Indian civilization had a much longer past than their invaders. So, the event of the intrusion of foreigners like the Mughals and the British were just but a drop in the ocean of India's very long civilization. Having able to boost their own self image, the next step was not go on head long collision with the invaders but to win psychologically - by gaining sympathy through pity through self torture or passive resist...

As part of the temples' master plan to encourage more youngsters to throng the temple, a small faction of its young and radical minded committee members introduced a weekly speech session. The speeches to be given by various individuals and professionals (not from the religious fraternity) on their individual perspective of Hinduism or life.It was going on well with various learned speakers (ehm...) took to the rostrum. I only knew that they were some many qualified individuals among the congregation during the introduction before their speech -CEOs, dentists etc. Like I was saying, everything was going well until they had their annual general meeting. A group of elderly people of the community who were the sort of the founding fathers of the temple, (they were there during the inception of temple), voiced out the displeasure over the turn of events. It seems that it was against the tradition ( paramapara ) of conducting talks by theologically challenged individuals in a foreign l...